Recently, U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announced a soon-to-be-deployed national terrorism alert system whose goal is to provide a “unified warning apparatus that is universally understood. It has been proposed that the alarms would be broadcast over National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) radios and would signal alert conditions—in descending order of urgency—of: critical, serious, alert and ready.
According to published information, the system would be used to alert state and local police and emergency personnel. According a report broadcast by National Public Radio on Feb. 15, 2002, the state of South Dakota has purchased 5,000 weather radios and is distributing them to universities, hospitals, law enforcement agencies and day care centers to provide a means of public emergency notification.
One advantage of the NOAA weather radios is that they turn themselves on when an alert is broadcast, increasing the likelihood that they will be noticed.